At the start of the year I really had no idea that an egg pattern was a viable option for carp and I was quite content in my ignorance. I spent quite a few years back in the day chucking eggs patterns for MI Steel-head with frustrating results. I was quite pleased with the idea of letting all of my egg tying materials rot in their bin.
Ignorance is bliss but my bliss started to crumble this spring. It started with the fly swap and Gregg Martin's submission.
Gregg's Eggs |
This was interesting and I even went out and caught some pond carp with them. These were tough carp in a behavioral mode that I usually don't have much luck. On a rational level I chalked it up as a new arrow in the quiver for carp sleep-tailing in mucky mud but I was still emotionally ill-prepared to embrace the egg.
Unfortunately the onslaught on my fragile emotional state has continued.
First of all my buddy Mike decided to start sight-fishing a small unweighted peach egg almost exclusively this year, particularly for passive behaviors. Hey, sounds like a personal problem to me except for the minor fact that he has destroyed me virtually every time we have fished together this year. He even hooked Kahn (my grass carp nemesis) on one of these eggs! Kahn annihilated him of course.
Second of all John and I experimented with an egg in Oregon. The results were mixed but promising. We caught a couple of fish and once again it seemed like an option when faced with passivity. For example I had one (and only one) top-water sunning carp wake up and aggressively charge 2 feet for a slowly sinking un-weighted egg that I dropped ever so gently in front of it from 35 or 40 feet away. I would have bet you a hundred dollars that fish was impossible.
Third of all I pulled out the egg on the South Platte last Friday. Will Rice and I had found a bunch of small carp super slow cruising mid-column in deeper water. Waste of time right? Not so fast I had 4 carp turn 90 degrees and slowly follow the egg down. I have no idea if they eventually took the fly, but to even get a reaction was a miracle.
Which brings us to the conundrum. What is it about the egg? Lets get it out of the way and say there is nothing like a size 10 peach egg slowly dropping straight through the column in any of the waters I have gotten a reaction on. These waters don't even get duck feeders.
- Shape? I just don't feel it. Gregg's are perfectly round, while Mikes are the more typical home-tied quick and dirty half-moon blob of yarn on a hook.
- Color? Seems promising. I didn't realize it when I was plunging them to the bottom of Steelhead runs but now that I have tried them sight fishing, the fluorescence in egg yarn is shockingly visible in the water.
- Sink rate? Partially. Unweighted eggs sink pretty slow. Not nearly as slow as you would think but really really slow. Lots of flies sink slow though.
- Splash? Very promising. An unweighted yarn egg drops on the water like a feather.
- Sink-rate versus splash? Very Very promising. Although they sink slowly, after just a fraction of a second on the water egg yarn sinks much faster than you would expect for how lightly it lands.
The idea is to mix a meaty crayfishy profiled body, the action of a Trouser Worm and some of the possible benefits of egg yarn. Now I just need to weasel some time on the water to try it out!